Focus, Nancy. It was market day in Saint-Amand and the crowd might give her a little cover, but it also meant there were plenty of eyes on the street to recognize her. Those damned posters. She put on the glasses that Denden had given her; they gave the world a slightly pinched look, but they did not blind her. Between that and the rather poor dress, and the not very fashionable hat, most men’s eyes glided over her.
The crowd was thin, and at each corner of the main square German soldiers lounged against the gray walls. She went through Denden’s description of the friendly café again in her mind. A small square, he’d said. Near to the river with a chestnut tree in the middle. Not this one then, with the church on one side and the town hall on the other, and high up the hill.
She stopped at a stall to fill her string bag with a few gray-market potatoes and a mangy-looking cabbage. Now she was just a woman on her way back home from market. She fetched her bike and pushed it past the soldiers on the south of the square. Not looking at them, not not looking either. She was invisible to them.
The road sloped down steeply toward the river, the narrow pavements empty now and the houses shuttered and cold. She looked right and left, searching for some sign of this square. Had Denden said anything about the view that would help her to know which way to turn when she reached the river? She’d have to guess. Left, then, if she couldn’t find it she’d put on a little dumb show of patting her pockets and fussing. Just an ordinary shopper who’d left something behind on one of her errands and had to turn back.
The river was full of summer rain, churning under the ancient stone arches of the bridge. She smiled at it. It was too narrow for a jeep full of soldiers to cross, so the Resistance wouldn’t have to blow it up. Perhaps it would survive another five hundred years. She paused as if to admire the view. On the other side of the river was a towpath and a band of woodland; to the right and on this side the towpath was squeezed between the water and an old stretch of city wall.
Left it was then. Christ she was glad she hadn’t had to operate in a town. She had almost rotted to death in the damp of the woods until the guys found her the bus, but at least she hadn’t had to live day after day under the half-shuttered eyes of all these buildings, having to guess at the whisperings, compromises and collaborations going on behind the closed doors.
She passed two broken-down-looking warehouses and stole a glance back up toward the church. A shimmer of green among the timbered house fronts of an old square caught her eye; she turned up the path and found herself in Denden’s square.
It was just as he had described it, a cartoon of small-town France, the high buildings leaning into one another, and one side occupied by the flank of an old seminary. The tree in the center of the square looked ancient too, gnarled and thick, but still sending forth fresh greenery into the summer air. The leaves shook and whispered in the breeze and she thought of the thousands of troops pouring into northern France, the individual men that made up the landing force, the fresh surge of hope.
She leaned her bicycle up against the wall in one of the narrow alleys leading off the square and hooked her bag over her arm. The café was open, but she had no passwords, no codes, and the charming young man Denden had spoken of, Bruno, had probably been shipped off to work in Germany or disappeared into the hills. She walked in.
It was a pretty mean little place: half a dozen tables and the zinc bar; three customers, all old men, and the barman. He was a great slab of a fellow, heavy armed and red faced. Did he look too well fed to be honest? She thought of the black-market men she had known in Marseille. Any one of them could have slit your throat for a hundred francs, but they were too bloody minded, too independent to deal with the Nazis. It was the men in suits with briefcases and polished shoes you had to look out for.
She asked for a brandy and when she had paid for it, drank it off and set her glass on the bar.
“Does Bruno still work here? An old friend of his asked me to pass on a message.”
The barman polished a glass with a dirty towel. “Give me the message, I’ll get it to him next time I see him. If I see him.”
She looked straight at him. “Maybe I’ll wait. See if he turns up.”
He shrugged, then said a bit too casually, “If it’s about the bike he’s selling, it’s out back. You can come see it if you like.”
The last thing Nancy wanted to see was another bloody bike—she could barely move as it was and she was sure her ankle was bleeding.
“That’s it!” she said brightly.
The yard at the back of the bar did have an old bike in it, which they bent over as they talked in case someone was watching from the overlooking buildings. Nancy fiddled with the seat and made a face.
“Bruno was picked up by the Gestapo two weeks ago,” the barman said, “and I can’t swear one of those old guys in my place isn’t on their payroll. I’ve known them both twenty years, but who can tell these days?”
Nancy folded her arms, still staring at the bike. “I heard Bruno had a spare radio set. We lost ours.”
The barman stood back, lifted his hands and shook his head hard enough to make his jowls wobble, as if refusing an unreasonable price. “Not a hope, Madame. Not here. But I know they have a spare in Châteauroux, or at least they did a week ago.”
“That’s eighty kilometers away!”
“Nearest one I know of.” A black cat emerged from the woodpile and rubbed against his legs. He bent down and scratched its ears. “One of their operators tried to run from a checkpoint, got shot in the back. You want Emmanuel, or at least that’s what they call him. British fella.”
No one had told Nancy about an operative called Emmanuel operating near Châteauroux. Fair enough—London wasn’t going to chat with them about agents in adjacent networks unless they needed to.
“Can you give me the address?”
He did and, shooing the cat away from the door, led her back out through the main bar. Nancy called out a cheery promise to talk to her friend about Bruno’s bike, and went to the narrow back alley where she had left her own.
Eighty kilometers away and she could barely put one foot in front of the other as it was. She looked at her ankle: yes, definitely bleeding. Eighty bloody kilometers, with an address and a name but no papers for the region and swarms of trigger-happy Gestapo all over the place. Then somehow, the ride back into the mountains.
“It has to be done, and you have to do it.”
Christ, she was losing it. She’d said that out loud. At least she hadn’t said it in English. She clambered painfully back onto the bike and pushed off.